Tuesday, July 31, 2012

Today seems to be the day for Twitter crimes at the Olympics. A Swiss soccer player was thrown out of the games for a “racist” tweet about South Koreans. A teenage boy in Weymouth was arrested for sending a malicious tweet about a British platform diver. And Twitter itself alerted the staff of NBC about a newspaper correspondent’s negative tweets about NBC coverage of the Olympics. The Twitter people also explained to NBC about how it could file a complaint.

In other news, the Swiss Central Bank is considering imposing negative interest rates — in effect, charging depositors a fee to park their money in Switzerland — in order to slow the inflow of capital, which is driving the franc up against other currencies.

Thanks to C. Cantoni, Fjordman, JD, JP, Nick, Nilk, RR, and all the other tipsters who sent these in.

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It was the demand of the growing Spanish-speaking Muslim community in the USA

The Institute of Islam has been created in order to respond to the demands of a growing Spanish-speaking Muslim community in the USA. But their objectives are not restricted just to the North American country.

In the beginning, they could be counted on the fingers of two hands, but later they began to increase by the dozens. Now there are hundreds. The number of converted Latinos choosing Islam as their new way of life increases weekly.

The Institute of Islam, an initiative of the Houston Institute of Islam, was created in light of this massive growth of the Muslim community. The purpose of the institute is to fill the gap of the institutionalization of Islam in the Spanish-speaking world, keeping itself far from political issues and focusing on Islamic knowledge as an acceptable perspective for other monotheistic religions. Apart from this, the Institute of Islam will promote and call on Muslims to an interfaith dialogue in order to achieve a better understanding between the different faiths.

Monday, July 30, 2012

The latest reports indicate that British Muslims have traveled to Syria from Birmingham and Greater London to take part in the jihad against the Assad regime. A recently released British journalist who had been kidnapped in Syria heard Birmingham and South London accents among his captors.

In other news, the German minister for the environment says that despite his country’s cutback in energy use, new coal and gas power stations are needed to make up for the phasing out of nuclear energy.

Thanks to C. Cantoni, CSP, Fjordman, GM, JP, and all the other tipsters who sent these in.

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His latest piece approaches the same topic in a more general way, and raises a number of important questions that we would all do well to consider. The distinction between negative rights — the right to be left alone by the state, the right to be secure in one’s person and property, the right not to detained without due process — and positive rights — the right to “free” health care, the right to a job, a state-backed minimum income for every citizen, etc. — is crucial. At bottom, it is the difference between liberty and authoritarian socialism.

It is quite true that the term “human rights” has an alarming plasticity of meaning, and is bandied about without being properly defined. It is also true that the concept is frequently abused for corrupt political ends, to prop up the most illiberal regimes, expand bureaucracy, and strengthen intrusive state surveillance — all ostensibly to protect human rights.

Mr. Zakalwe is right to question the extent to which members of the Counterjihad subscribe to the tenets of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. But how monolithic are we in this regard? Do we, the opponents of sharia and Islamization, form a bloc that has a uniform and consistent position on “human rights”?

I can only speak for myself: I hold the UDHR in relatively low esteem. Parts of it are fine — the normal guarantees of liberty that one would demand and expect. But there’s also a lot of socialist claptrap, such as this:

Article 22.

Everyone, as a member of society, has the right to social security and is entitled to realization, through national effort and international co-operation and in accordance with the organization and resources of each State, of the economic, social and cultural rights indispensable for his dignity and the free development of his personality.

And this:

Article 23. (2)

Everyone, without any discrimination, has the right to equal pay for equal work.

And this:

Article 24.

Everyone has the right to rest and leisure, including reasonable limitation of working hours and periodic holidays with pay.

And even this:

Article 25. (1)

Everyone has the right to a standard of living adequate for the health and well-being of himself and of his family, including food, clothing, housing and medical care and necessary social services, and the right to security in the event of unemployment, sickness, disability, widowhood, old age or other lack of livelihood in circumstances beyond his control.

So the UDHR is not a document that I, as a red-blooded American patriot who reveres the Bill of Rights, would ever promote.

But I am not a European, and Europe is still almost uniformly socialist. There is no respite from socialism in Europe. From Oslo to Athens, from Helsinki to Lisbon: they all seem to love the paraphernalia of the welfare state.

As the statist economies of the Eurozone circle the drain, voters turn out in droves to throw out the center-right rascals and install the True Socialists — as if more socialism would cure the European Disease.

I’ve omitted some of his text for brevity’s sake; visit his blog to read the whole thing. Passages that deserve special attention have been bolded:

Any member of the Counterjihad movement who supports the idea of human rights must take a public position on the way the idea has been implemented in modern Europe. An abundance of news reports make it clear that human rights judges are facilitating the islamisation of Europe and its demographic conquest by third-worlders generally.

Why “must” we take a public position, within parameters defined by Islam versus Europe? I have made my own position abundantly clear many times, for anyone who cares to read it. What else is necessary?

He appeared tonight on Michael Coren’s SUN TV program to talk about the incident last Friday in Marseille (reported here in the news feed a couple of nights ago; see the Telegraph article) in which a group of Muslims brawled with police over the latter’s attempt to enforce the no-burka law. The dénouement of the whole sordid affair came when political pressure forced the Marseille police to release the brawlers in order to appease Muslim sentiment during Ramadan.

The shocking details in this article really ought to be headline news around the world, but investigative journalism is not what it used to be. The London Olympics opening ceremony was hijacked by Communist sympathisers working for the main director Danny Boyle.

Labour Party MPs are already boasting that the opening ceremony was a socialist event and the “best advert for the party in years”. Conservative MPs are privately muttering about the very obvious left-wing bias — as well they might.

Danny Boyle worked with one scriptwriter and four selected assistant directors to stage the opening and closing ceremonies. The five are:

Steen kindly supplied a number of photos for the article, and they may be seen by visiting FrontPage.

Excerpts from Fjordman’s account are below:

After the meeting was concluded, Richard Howitt, a Socialist Member of the European Parliament (MEP) from England, demanded an investigation after so-called right-wingers allegedly “hijacked” the parliament’s facilities for a “hate” meeting involving people such as Tommy Robinson from the English Defence League (EDL).

Howitt challenged the European Parliament to probe what he called this “mis-use” of its premises, adding that “I have written to the president of parliament to complain about the use of our facilities to raise funds for such hate organisations.” For the record: No organization, neither the EDL nor any other group, engaged in fund-raising at the conference. Howitt’s statement was an absolute falsehood.

Richard Howitt has been a member of the Labour Party’s policy-making National Policy Forum since 1994 in Britain. On his own website, he states that among his main priorities are “using EU powers to fight discrimination and promote equality in all fields” and to work for the full EU membership of Muslim Turkey. He represents the true face of Eurabia.

The EU Parliament’s current president is Martin Schulz, a German career Socialist of over four decades who since 2004 has been the leader of the Socialists in the European Parliament.

Sunday, July 29, 2012

Fighting between Philippine soldiers and Abu Sayyaf mujahideen on the island of Basilan in the autonomous Muslim region of Mindanao has left sixteen people dead. Among those killed, twelve are reportedly soldiers.

In other news, Japan racked up a record trade deficit of more than $37 billion during the first half of 2012.

Thanks to C. Cantoni, Insubria, JD, McR, Nick, Nilk, Steen, Vlad Tepes, and all the other tipsters who sent these in.

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The following article about the Brussels Conference was published recently in the print addition of the German newspaper Junge Freiheit. As far as I am aware, no online version of the piece has been posted.

Many thanks to our Swedish correspondent LN for the translation, and for the scanned image of Junge Freiheit. The links in the article were added by me:

Harbingers of rigid censorship

The Islam-Critics Conference: experts warn of impending restrictions on freedom of expression

by Hinrich Rohbohm, Junge Freiheit, in Brussels

Will criticism of Islam soon be a criminal offense across the EU? This is at least what the International Civil Liberties Alliance (ICLA) fears: It refers to the resolution 16/18 which was initiated by the Organisation for Islamic Cooperation (OIC) and was adopted by the UN Human Rights Council in March 2007, calling for a fight against intolerance and the stigmatization of religions.

A resolution that at first sounds good. But behind the veil of the benevolent-sounding verbiage a special purpose could be hidden: to prevent any criticism of Islam under threat of criminal punishment. In other words, a regulation which would be close to the jurisdiction of the Shariah state.

Back in 1990, at its 19th Conference of Foreign Ministers, the OIC had specified and decided the so-called ‘Cairo Declaration of Human Rights in Islam’. And in it explicitly emphasized that only the Shariah is set as the basis for interpretation of the statement. The Cairo Declaration shall apply to the 57 OIC member states as a guideline in the field of human rights. The only question is, how seriously do the OIC-member-states then take the ‘UN Declaration of Human Rights’ of 1948?

Since UN resolutions for states, however, have little more than an advisory character, the OIC now obviously want to reload. Their goal: EU-wide legislation, making it possible to prosecute anti-Islamic media coverage as well as Islam-critical studies.

The EU has allegedly offered the OIC to serve as host this summer for the so-called Istanbul Process, which is to advance these efforts. Back in December of last year, the U.S. government under Barack Obama agreed to act as host for an OIC conference. Thus, with regard to the absence of political legitimacy for its unreasonable demands, the organization received a substantial revaluation of its reputation.

Saturday, July 28, 2012

Former FBI Director William Webster said Rep. Michele Bachmann’s claim that Huma Abedin may be connected to the Muslim Brotherhood is “morally wrong”. He asserted that her statements undermine the war on terror.

In other news, Lebanon’s Olympic judo team refused to train next to Israeli competitors at a practice venue in London. A special screen had to be erected to separate the two teams.

Thanks to C. Cantoni, Diana West, Hermes, Insubria, JD, JP, RR, Takuan Seiyo, TV, Vlad Tepes, and all the other tipsters who sent these in.

Notice to tipsters: Please don’t submit extensive excerpts from articles that have been posted behind a subscription firewall, or are otherwise under copyright protection.

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Congressman Trent Franks (R-AZ, a man I hold in high esteem) questions Assistant Attorney General Thomas Perez about the Obama administration’s commitment, or lack thereof, to First Amendment rights.

Mr. Perez’ appearance is just one of a long series of videos in which the underlings of the Obama administration waffle and weasel their way through congressional hearings. Janet Napolitano, Eric Holder, and Paul Stockton have been among his illustrious predecessors.

The following video and essay from Germany were translated by Rembrandt Clancy, who describes himself as “one of your consistent readers from Canada”. Mr. Clancy also wrote the introductory descriptions for the material.

The topic is the European Stabilization Mechanism (ESM), a fiscal regime which would remove all control over financial matters from the member states of the Eurozone and transfer them to a completely unaccountable and unelected group of “experts” at the EU level. By sleeping through the introduction of the ESM, the nation-states of Europe are effectively consenting to the surrender of the last vestiges of their national sovereignty. In the future, elected parliamentary bodies and national governments will become mere figureheads, pushing piles of paper around and giving fine speeches, but having no meaningful power over their countries’ most important affairs.

Mr. Clancy sent his material several weeks ago, and it accumulated in the pile of “Brussels backup”. However, since the ESM remains in limbo as the Karlsruhe Federal Constitutional Court in Germany considers its fate, the issues described here are still current.

Before you jump all over me: Yes, I know who Lyndon LaRouche is. As a matter of fact, his headquarters is in Leesburg, right here in the Commonwealth of Virginia.

Regardless of its source, this information about the ESM and the Fiscal Pact is generally correct, and right on the money (so to speak) as far as the future of Europe is concerned. This is it, folks: if the ESM goes through, Europe will undergo the final stage of its transformation into a totalitarian superstate.

The fact that this material was put together by Mrs. LaRouche is neither here nor there. As Thilo Sarrazin, the former head of the Bundesbank, once said: “If the NPD [neo-Nazis] says the world is round, I won’t say it is flat because they’re on the far right.”

Read the material. Watch the video. See what you think. And, if you’re a citizen of the Eurozone, take stock of what remains of your freedom.

From Rembrandt Clancy:

In view of the imminent developments in Europe over the European Stabilization Mechanism (ESM), I am sending a related German video (which I subtitled) and a short essay, which I also translated from the German — for your consideration. Both come from the same source (see below). I thought you might be interested since the ESM lies behind an article by M. Sattler called “Flight into Dictatorship”.

This 15-minute video was abridged from a 25-minute original called “Save Europe from the EU Dictatorship” (“Rettet Europa von der EU-Diktatur”). The film is the production of BüSoTV Berlin (source):

BüSo is the acronym for “Bürgerrechtsbewegung Solidarität” (“Civil Rights Movement Solidarity”). The BüSo is a small party in Germany which was founded by Helga Zepp-LaRouche, who has been its federal president since 1992, and is part of the world-wide LaRouche movement founded by her husband, Lyndon LaRouche, who is also a prolific writer (source: BüSo website). BüSo is currently part of a campaign to stop the implementation of the ESM Treaty.

I originally ran across the shortened version of the video on the Islam-critical site, SOS-Österreich, in an article entitled “The EU is not Europe, but its destruction”. I subtitled it before I found the longer original, which is just as well.

The topic of the video revolves around two treaties: the European Stabilization Mechanism (ESM) and the Fiscal Pact.

The essay, which you will find below, deals with the same two topics. It is written by Helga Zepp-LaRouche herself. It is an ideal introduction to the video since it contains specific background which makes the video easier to digest. Also, both essay and video are from the same source.

All the formatting in the essay is from the original. The few comments in square brackets are mine.

In the following clip from Sun TV, British Israel Coalition spokesman Sam Westrop discusses the IOC’s refusal to commemorate the 1972 massacre of eleven Israeli athletes by Palestinian terrorists at the Olympics in Munich. Mr. Westrop also talks about the alternative minute of silence for the Munich victims that was arranged in Trafalgar Square.

Kevin Carroll, a founder of the English Defence League and now the joint vice-chairman of the British Freedom Party, is standing for police commissioner in Bedfordshire.

In order to file for the election, Kevin needs to raise a deposit of £5000 (about $7860). Any Briton (or friend of Britain) who wants to see real political change in the UK should dig deep and help Kevin get his name on the ballot.

Like other leaders, members, and supporters of British Freedom, Kevin represents the age-old tradition of British liberty, which has been sorely neglected for the last few decades. As police commissioner he would be in a position to advocate for policies that would help restore true civil order to a country that has long been deprived of it.

In November 2012, for the first time ever, members of the public will be able to vote for a Police and Crime Commissioner (PCC) to act as “the voice of the people and hold the police to account” in their police force area.

Police and crime commissioners (PCCs) will aim to cut crime and deliver an effective and efficient police service within their force area.

To provide stronger and more transparent accountability of the police, PCCs will be elected by the public to hold chief constables and the force to account; effectively making the police answerable to the communities they serve.

Police and crime commissioners will ensure community needs are met as effectively as possible, and will improve local relationships through building confidence and restoring trust. They will also work in partnership across a range of agencies at local and national level to ensure there is a unified approach to preventing and reducing crime.

PCCs will not be expected to run the police. The role of the PCC is to be the voice of the people and hold the police to account.

British Freedom is pleased to announce Party co-Vice Chairman Kevin Carroll as PCC candidate for the Bedfordshire Police Authority. Kevin has strong views on policing and amongst other things will be campaigning for:

Our Norwegian correspondent The Observer sends his translation of an opinion piece about one of the admirers of Lenin and Che who played a prominent role at the recent commemoration ceremony on the island of Utøya.

The translator includes this note:

This op-ed was published a couple of days ago. It’s about the official first anniversary commemoration event on Utøya, and the Swedish musician who was invited to perform at the service. Wikipedia has some background info on Mikael Wiehe, the musician in question.

It is no secret that the AUF to a certain extent is a Marxist organization that has previously given their wholehearted support to various dictators and terrorist organizations. However, one would expect that they had re-evaluated their views on autocratic regimes and the use of terrorist tactics as a means to achieve political goals in the wake of the mass shooting on Utøya.

Is it really appropriate to invite such a museum custodian and friend of dictatorships to be the main guest at the official one year commemoration event of the July 22 tragedy?

Many of us felt profound sympathy for the AUF members when we followed the televised commemoration from Utøya one year after the fascistic mass murderer went on a rampage there. Great speeches were delivered; great songs, great turnout and a moving speech delivered by Eskild Pedersen in which he also included those who were murdered at Government Square in Oslo. However, and unfortunately, I am left with a rather bitter aftertaste.

And this is due to the choice of the principal musician to perform on Utøya, an excellent artist, but also an old friend of communist dictatorships from the ‘70s, Mikael Wiehe. He still is by the way, but I wasn’t aware that the AUF share his views and I would rather prefer to believe that it isn’t so. Let’s take a look at the past and let’s shed light on some things that young people in Norway know very little about, and which has been underreported and neglected by the schools.

In the wake of the July 22 tragedy few TV reports made a stronger impression on me than the young leading member of AUF who was talking about the sheer hell on Utøya. Hanging on the wall behind him was a large picture of the violent communist Che Guevara. The picture was Alberto Cordes’ iconic “Guerilla Heroico” from 1960, a false romanticizing of a man who sent gays to labour camps to correct their “inclinations”. He was responsible for hundreds of executions after the revolution in 1959. He was an ideologically rigid communist representing a rigid repressive dictatorship. How do such people become heroes, and why is a picture of such a person hanging on a wall as a role model in an AUF office in 2011?

And then there’s Mikael Wiehe. In an op-ed on May 3, 2007 in the Swedish newspaper Dagens Nyheter he wrote:

“In the last 40 years Cuba is the country in the region that has done most to safeguard human rights.”

This is pretty hard-core stuff, and it gets even worse: On his album Ta det tilbaka (“Take It Back”) from 2010, he is rightly critical of the financial industry’s greed and its complicity to the financial crisis in 2008. He writes:

According to the Bulgarian online news site Bivol.be, the bus bomber who killed himself and six other people at the Burgas airport on July 18 was acting as a “mule” for others, and was unaware that his luggage was to be detonated remotely.

Bivol has published photos of the young man’s head, and say that he had blue eyes and Caucasian features. The photos may be disturbing to sensitive readers, so I’ve left them out of the excerpts below. Anyone who wants to see them may visit the original article.

Exclusive in Bivol: Headshots of the Burgas Bus Bomber

Bivol is publishing exclusive photos of the head of the person, who was announced as the suicide assailant by the Bulgarian authorities. A young, blue-eyed man with perfectly Caucasoid features, high forehead and thick black hair can be seen on the snapshots.

The photos are obviously manipulated with software, which had added rasterization to the image and retouching of the most dreadful marks of the explosion.

Bivol wrote earlier that the “kamikadze” version (the right word is “shahid” — an Arabic word, which means “martyr” or “witness”) given by the internal minister Cvetanov didn’t endure consequently and it is more likely that the young man had been used as a mule without knowing that he is going to be blasted. The perpetrators of the assault interrupted the connection to them and to the organizers by blasting the man by remote sensing methods.

This version was confirmed by the witness Gilat Kulangia, who had seen the man taking out suitcases from the rack of the bus and instead putting in his backpack. Then a scandal started between her husband and another tourist and after a few seconds the explosion echoed.

In an interview for Darik radio the brigadier Nitzan Nuriel, former head of the Office for Combating Terrorism to the Israeli National Security Council, said yesterday:

“He has had the mission to put the bags with the explosive in the bus, because if he had the right to decide alone whether to blow himself up, he then should have done it so that there are more victims and damages.”

Nuriel also explained that the Israeli services have experience with such assaults when the organizers choose people, who don’t know that they are going to die.

The suicide assault version was disseminated in the parliament today and the security services couldn’t do anything in order to prevent it.

Friday, July 27, 2012

When police asked a burka-clad woman to show her ID in the southern French city of Marseille, she and her fellow Muslims reacted with anger, and a brawl with police ensued. One policeman was reportedly bitten, and the woman and several other people were arrested. They were released later without being charged, however, in a gesture to honor the holy month of Ramadan.

In other news, seven children were killed by an explosive booby trap in Ghor province in Afghanistan. The bomb’s intended target was said to have been the Afghan police. Elsewhere in Afghanistan, two Coalition servicemen were killed by a roadside bomb.

Thanks to C. Cantoni, Caroline Glick, Fjordman, Insubria, JP, RR, Takuan Seiyo, and all the other tipsters who sent these in.

Notice to tipsters: Please don’t submit extensive excerpts from articles that have been posted behind a subscription firewall, or are otherwise under copyright protection.

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Caveat: Articles in the news feed are posted “as is”. Gates of Vienna cannot vouch for the authenticity or accuracy of the contents of any individual item posted here. We check each entry to make sure it is relatively interesting, not patently offensive, and at least superficially plausible. The link to the original is included with each item’s title. Further research and verification are left to the reader.

The following article, which was published in Die Welt almost a month ago, was part of the “Brussels backlog”, and is just now seeing the light of day in my to-do pile.

Many thanks to Hermes for the translation:

Pigs’ heads in front of a mosque: Police tracking down the suspect

The 25-year-old is said to belong to the extreme right — no confession made.

Berlin — Police from Berlin have questioned a suspect in connection with the attack perpetrated with two severed pigs’ heads against a mosque in Neukölln. On Thursday at around 6 pm the detectives allegedly searched the apartment and the car belonging to a 25-year-old in the district of Lichtenrade, the spokesperson for the Department of Public Prosecution said, in this way confirming a report from the newspaper Bild. The man, however, said nothing when confronted with the accusations.

The man is accused of leaving two severed pigs’ heads in front of the Sehitlik Mosque in April. This is a strong insult to Muslims, because pigs are considered by Islam to be dirty animals. Before this incident, paint bombs had been thrown at the building, and representatives of the mosque were blackmailed. In this letters, foreigners were told under threats of aggression to leave [the country].

There was a lot of culturally enriched diverse multicultural activity in front of the Olympic Stadium in London today for the opening of the Games. EDL Buck was there with his video camera, and Vlad Tepes has pulled the clips together for your viewing pleasure:

The video below is a trailer for a Belgian documentary about sexual harassment on the streets of Brussels. No one should be surprised at the culturally-enriched aspects of the experiences this woman had to endure.

Many thanks to Michael Laudahn for the translation, and to Vlad Tepes for the subtitling:

Thursday, July 26, 2012

Mario Draghi, the president of the European Central Bank, told an audience in London that the ECB would do whatever it takes to save the euro. The financial markets responded positively, and European stock prices rallied as a result. Meanwhile, Citigroup analysts say there is a 90% chance that Greece will abandon the euro.

In other news, a pair of female hikers in Switzerland was attacked by a herd of cows. One of the women sustained head injuries from the attack, and is undergoing hospital treatment.

Thanks to alcade, C. Cantoni, Diana West, Fjordman, Gaia, Insubria, JP, McR, RR, and all the other tipsters who sent these in.

Notice to tipsters: Please don’t submit extensive excerpts from articles that have been posted behind a subscription firewall, or are otherwise under copyright protection.

Commenters are advised to leave their comments at this post (rather than with the news articles) so that they are more easily accessible.

Caveat: Articles in the news feed are posted “as is”. Gates of Vienna cannot vouch for the authenticity or accuracy of the contents of any individual item posted here. We check each entry to make sure it is relatively interesting, not patently offensive, and at least superficially plausible. The link to the original is included with each item’s title. Further research and verification are left to the reader.

The following message from Chairman Paul Weston was published today on the British Freedom Website.

Chairman’s Statement

Early summer 2012 has been an extraordinarily successful period for British Freedom. Whilst I’ve been busy fielding questions on local and national radio, Kevin Carroll has been winning hearts and minds with his electrifying public speeches, and Stephen Lennon has been promoting British Freedom abroad, recently representing our party at the historic Brussels conference held in the European Parliament building.

Behind the scenes, BF’s dedicated team of Simon Bennett, Peter Mullins, Peter Stafford, Michael Wood, Stephen Tweed and George Whale continue to develop the party’s web and social media presence (see, for example BritishFreedomTV on YouTube, which thanks to Stephen T’s hard work is attracting many new subscribers), and to organise regional and local activities to spread the message of Freedom across the country.

New membership applications reached their highest ever level a few weeks ago, and are continuing at a steady rate through the summer. I am especially pleased to report the addition of many new female members and supporters, some of whom are already making important contributions.

My recent participation in a BBC Radio 4 programme presented by Trevor Phillips was quite an eye-opener. Ostensibly an impartial investigation into Europe’s emerging ‘far-right’ parties, it was really just another excuse for attacking the so called ‘right-wing’ movement, and I entered the studio knowing full well what to expect. (It has always amused and irritated me in equal measure that the media insist on using the term ‘far-right’ for parties like ours, which represent the popular majority view on so many issues, not only immigration and national identity.)

Disappointingly for Mr Phillips, the programme didn’t quite go according to plan. He was unable to cast me as a ‘far-right extremist’ simply because I was able to present my arguments logically, reasonably and above all, honestly! The left-wing bias of the BBC and Mr Phillips was very noticeable with Phillips apparently astonished that I should question the Communist background of EU President Barroso! I pointed out the 100 million dead at the hands of the global Communists but this made no impression at all on Phillips, which is perhaps not surprising given his admiration of Lenin…

Naturally, the BBC edited my half-hour contribution down to just a couple of minutes and the most interesting exchanges were lost, but BF received many new enquiries as a result of the broadcast, which was really the main point of the exercise.

I often scratch my head in bafflement that a follower of Lenin (the architect of the Soviet gulags that killed so many innocent people) can get a job as a presenter with Britain’s national broadcasting organisation — and nobody even questions it! But that’s modern Britain for you. And of course it’s not just the BBC that’s decorated with sculptures of Lenin, or posters of Karl Marx and Che Guevara. In fact many of our universities and government departments unofficially disbar anybody who is not of the left — and the unwritten rule for conservatives or patriots wanting careers in those institutions is never to reveal their political opinions. So much for free speech!

Open letter from the gay community to Volker Beck: “Islam is a homophobic Religion”

Dear Mr. Beck,

We know and consider you to be a politician and a representative who up until now has campaigned magnificently in favor of the rights and the equal treatment of gays and lesbians in our country. For this reason we’d like to express again our deep gratitude to you.

Nevertheless, it came as a shock to us the news that your party (Bündnis90-Die Grünen) spoke in favor of the acceptance of Islam as the third main religion in Germany.

As a homosexual, you know what that means:

If Islam should gain this acceptance, it should become clear to us gays that everything we have fought for (the recognition of same-sex couples, laws against discrimination, the acceptance of gays and lesbians in society) would disappear again.

That’s why we ask you, a vehement supporter of the rights of homosexuals worldwide, to protest as strongly as possible against this your party’s plan, and to make use of your influence inside your party.

We consider Islam to be a homophobic religion, [because] homosexuality is, according to the Quran, something to be punished by death.

As we reported last night, the Greek triple jumper Voula Papachristou was excommunicated from the Church of Political Correctness for tweeting “With so many Africans in Greece… at least the West Nile mosquitoes will eat home made food!!!”

A regular reader from New York State emailed us this morning with questions about what happened to the unfortunate Ms. Papachristou:

I am having trouble finding what is “racist” about this joke. The Olympic decision-makers must have a very expansive definition of what constitutes racism. When confronted with a reference to racism, my reaction is: Name the race!

I don’t see any reference to race, but if forced to find one, it would have to be Egyptians, who are members of the white race.

Why would anyone think this statement is racist? The homemade human food for West Nile mosquitoes are inhabitants of Africa’s most populous country.

Why all this solicitude for the tender feelings of the white-race Egyptians who live on the western bank of the Nile? Do they really feel offended? In what way?

Somebody please explain this.

I wrote him back and listed several things that are “racist” about this incident under the prevailing norms of political correctness:

Wednesday, July 25, 2012

Writing in The Irish Examiner, Peter Sutherland and Cecilia Malmström call for EU countries to open their borders and embrace the arrival of immigrants. Mr. Sutherland and Ms. Malmström emphasize the political and social enrichment that the newcomers will bring with them.

In other news, Eurozone analysts now agree that there is no longer any question of whether there will be a Spanish bailout, but only of when it will happen.

Thanks to alcade, C. Cantoni, Erick Stakelbeck, Fjordman, Insubria, JD, Nick, Steen, Vlad Tepes, and all the other tipsters who sent these in.

Notice to tipsters: Please don’t submit extensive excerpts from articles that have been posted behind a subscription firewall, or are otherwise under copyright protection.

Commenters are advised to leave their comments at this post (rather than with the news articles) so that they are more easily accessible.

Caveat: Articles in the news feed are posted “as is”. Gates of Vienna cannot vouch for the authenticity or accuracy of the contents of any individual item posted here. We check each entry to make sure it is relatively interesting, not patently offensive, and at least superficially plausible. The link to the original is included with each item’s title. Further research and verification are left to the reader.

I laughed out loud at this… ahem… indiscretion by a young Greek athlete. Not so much at the gag itself — which is mildly funny, if you’re not politically correct — but at the fact that someone of her generation had managed to escape indoctrination to the point where she could tweet such a thing.

But one has to wonder how she could have been unaware of the inevitable consequences of her little joke. What was she thinking?

The museum director quoted in the article below is an exemplar of the well-educated cultural elite in Norway. Like most other people in his cohort, he does not believe in the legitimacy of the nation-state, and views nationalism as a dangerous atavistic sentiment.

He is a reminder that the real enemy we face is not Islam. The people who threaten Western civilization are its privileged scions. They are some of the most intelligent and well-educated members of our societies.

Our Norwegian correspondent The Observer, who translated the article, includes this note:

This article talks about a museum in Trondheim (the third largest city in Norway) that refuses to fly the Norwegian flag because the director believes that it is a racist nationalistic symbol.

The museum director should also reflect a little bit upon the fact that he can freely insult his fellow countrymen (if he indeed is Norwegian) or neighbours (if he is, as I suspect, a Swede) without being physically harmed or fearing any other serious repercussions. He wouldn’t be so easygoing if the target of his derision were Islam.

By the way — in the penultimate paragraph the museum director is obviously referring to Palestinians, but doing so in a very subtle way.

The director of the Museum of Art in Trondheim, Pontus Kyander, hopes that the decision will generate a debate about the meaning of the flag.

In a post on the museum’s Facebook page today, he says that the national flag will never fly from the museum building as long as he is director.

“The Museum of Art invites everyone, regardless of origin or nationality. Nations are ideas of the 19th century,” Kyander claims.

He believes that a flag can be used and misused, and by not flying the Norwegian flag the museum hopes to generate a debate about the meaning of a flag.

“A national flag can symbolize nationalism, which in some cases can result in a nation seeing itself as superior to others,” he adds.

Venstre [Liberals] politician reacts

The Liberal Party county leader in Sør-Trøndelag, Trond Åm, reacts to Kyander’s decision.

“Kyander kicks the flag into the hands of nationalists and extremists, which is a pity, because the flag is well suited as the lowest common denominator in a society characterized by ethnic and cultural diversity,” he says.

Åm believes that the Norwegian flag is a symbol of belonging in a liberal democracy.

If you’re a teenage boy who lives in Ontario and you want a quick snort, there’s an easy way for you to catch that buzz without any annoying requests to show ID. Just slip on a burka and pop into the nearest government-run liquor store — you’re good to go!

Here in Virginia we have a similar government liquor system, the ABC. I wonder if the same trick would work in, say, Falls Church or Loudon County, where cultural enrichment is so thick on the ground…?

Ingrid Carlqvist was born in Stockholm. After graduating from Gothenburg University (journalism) in 1981, she worked as a reporter for Nordvastra Skanes Tidningar in Helsingborg.

In 1987 she moved on to Kvallsposten in Malmö where she stayed for twelve years, first as a reporter and then as a news editor. She was the first woman ever in the editorial management for Kvallsposten.

In 1999 she began free-lancing for different newspapers and magazines, constructed an award-winning board game and worked as an information officer for a theatre company. In 2006 she became a news editor for Aftonbladet in Malmö, and in 2008 editor-in-chief of the magazine Villaliv.

In 2005 she wrote her first book, and since then has written several biographies and one detective story. Last year she founded the Free Press Society in Sweden and became its President.

Tuesday, July 24, 2012

For the first time since NATO supply convoys in Pakistan resumed earlier this month, mujahideen have attacked a truck carrying supplies for Afghanistan. The driver of the truck was killed, and a passenger was seriously injured.

In financial news, the Moody’s agency has warned Germany that its credit rating may be downgraded, due to the country’s exposure to the risky debts of less solvent Eurozone nations such as Greece and Spain.

In other news, a court in Nantes, France has ruled that fish have a right to come and go as they please, thereby outlawing man-made devices in rivers that control the movement of fish.

Thanks to C. Cantoni, Fjordman, Insubria, JD, TV, and all the other tipsters who sent these in.

Notice to tipsters: Please don’t submit extensive excerpts from articles that have been posted behind a subscription firewall, or are otherwise under copyright protection.

Commenters are advised to leave their comments at this post (rather than with the news articles) so that they are more easily accessible.

Caveat: Articles in the news feed are posted “as is”. Gates of Vienna cannot vouch for the authenticity or accuracy of the contents of any individual item posted here. We check each entry to make sure it is relatively interesting, not patently offensive, and at least superficially plausible. The link to the original is included with each item’s title. Further research and verification are left to the reader.

As I mentioned last Sunday, a huge controversy has arisen inside the Beltway over the questions posed publicly by five Republican members of Congress about the infiltration by the Muslim Brotherhood of the United States government. Speaker of the House John Boehner has targeted Rep. Michele Bachmann in particular for her insubordination towards Saudi Arabia the GOP establishment.

Former congressman Newt Gingrich appeared on Politico yesterday to discuss the issue. Many thanks to Vlad Tepes for uploading this video:

There seems to be a three-way demonic convergence joining the Obama administration, the Republican leadership, and apologists for the Muslim Brotherhood employed by various agencies of the federal government. The preferred tactic is to vigorously denounce any Republican who dares to point out MB agents of influence within the U.S. government. Those doing the denouncing have so far been unwilling to address the factual basis of statements made by Rep. Bachmann and her colleagues in the House.

Walid Shoebat has gathered ample evidence for the connections between the Muslim Brotherhood and Hillary Clinton’s top aide Huma Abedin in a lengthy paper, “Proof: Huma has Ties to Muslim Brotherhood — Countless Documents Surface”, published on his website (pdf):

We will prove beyond doubt that McCain, Ellison and the others are wrong. The evidence will show that Bachmann’s claim is not based on a “phantom,” “sinister accusation,” or “unspecified and unsubstantiated associations of members of Huma’s family.”

I recommend that readers take the time to download and read the whole thing.

Senator John McCain ought to be embarrassed. So should House Speaker John Boehner and Congressman Mike Rogers, the former FBI agent who chairs the Select Committee on Intelligence.

These pillars of the Republican establishment have been championing the cause of Huma Abedin, the deputy chief of staff to Secretary of State Hillary Clinton. Ms. Abedin’s name arose, along with several others, in connection with questions pressed by five conservative House Republicans regarding Muslim Brotherhood infiltration of the United States government. The GOP establishment, led by McCain, Boehner, and Rogers, has been slamming Congresswoman Michele Bachmann, one of the five House conservatives, over her refusal to back down from concerns over Ms. Abedin.

Update: The entire paper on Islamic finance is here. There is also an interview (in German).

A new study by the Stresemann Foundation reveals that sharia-compliant finance is gaining virtually no traction in Germany, due in large part to a lack of demand for it among German Turks.

A press release summarizing the foundation’s findings was sent to Gates of Vienna earlier today. Many thanks to JLH for this prompt translation.

Is Islamic Finance Collapsing in Germany?

Low Muslim Income and Lack of Agreement among Sharia Scholars as Intrinsic Barriers to Islamic Financial Products

Berlin/Jena, July 24 2012 — Islamic finance in Germany has, to the greatest possible extent, remained unsuccessful. A working paper from the Stresemann Foundation now shows that internal barriers especially are determinative. In the first place, Muslim immigrants are low-income and demonstrate little investment potential, because of having less formal education and because Muslim women often have no gainful employment. For another thing, the system of sharia scholars leads to problems due to nebulous legal practices.

“The present failure of Islamic financial products in this country cannot be attributed to lack of support by policy and the authorities,” declares Rebecca Schönenbach, author of the working paper and certified Islamic specialist. “In Great Britain and France as well, which have generously adapted their financial regulations to sharia-compliant banking, there is no demand from depositors.”

He’s talking about a new initiative known as “One Sweden”, which aims to make Sweden even more tolerant, diverse, inclusive, multicultural, and all those other wonderful things that Sweden is so good at.

And, strangely enough, the project is based on a Malaysian original known as “1Malaysia”. The good, kind, thoughtful, well-educated people who run the Nation Formerly Known as Sweden have decided, using their advanced powers of ratiocination and deduction, that Sweden would be a better place if it resembled Malaysia.

Before we get into the details of this fascinating new scheme, let’s compare and contrast Malaysia and Sweden.

Malaysia, like so many other countries that became independent after the end of European colonial rule, was cobbled together from disparate pieces that had been combined under a British administrative structure. These regions and groups — mostly Malay-speaking, but of several ethnicities — are variously Muslim, Christian, Hindu, and Buddhist.

Freedom of religion is guaranteed under the Malaysian constitution, but not really, because Islam is the state religion, and we all know how Islam treats other religions. Whenever constitutional rights and freedoms come into conflict with Islamic law, Islam holds the trump card.

So it’s no wonder that Malaysia is perennially searching for ways to reduce interethnic strife and improve the effectiveness and efficiency of its civil administration. But what about Sweden?

Until about forty years ago the population of Sweden was made up almost entirely of, well, Swedes. Except for the Sami in the far north — and a sprinkling of Norwegians, Danes, and Finns — Sweden was populated by fair-complexioned blue-eyed people who spoke the same language, nominally observed the same religion, and shared a common culture.

All that has changed in the decades since, of course. Certain neighborhoods in major Swedish cities resemble Addis Ababa or Basra. Immigrant crime is endemic and epidemic. A level of violence that used to be unknown in Sweden has become routine.

Sweden was not remade through conquest.

It was never administered by a foreign colonial power.

No outside agency forced Sweden to become a polyglot mishmash of disorder and hatred.

Sweden did this to itself. Or, to be more precise, the well-educated ruling class, the cream of Swedish society, did this to the rest of Sweden.

And now, to fix the horrific mess which it has created and imposed upon the people it is supposed to protect and serve, that same ruling class has decided to make Sweden more like Malaysia.

Here’s what the One Sweden website has to say about the new, improved, ethically enhanced version of Sweden that is now under construction: (all summaries and translations from the Swedish in this post are by LN):

A new project for the unification of Sweden against violence has begun:

Modeled on the “One Malaysia” initiative, which involves not only the Muslim part of the Malaysian population, but also includes the Chinese and Indian groups. The focus is on joint training, development and democracy.

[…]

New impetus in One Sweden

…We are different voices with different political and religious interests, but stand united for One Sweden's basic values. An open, democratic and prosperous Sweden.

In 2012, One, Sweden arrange a series of dialogue forums where persons active in civil society together will find solutions to various socio-economic problems in society.

For a closer look at the Malaysian model, consult the Wikipedia entry on 1Malaysia:

1Malaysia (pronounced One Malaysia in English and Satu Malaysia in Malay) is an on-going programme designed by Malaysian Prime Minister Najib Tun Razak on 16 September 2010, calling for the cabinet, government agencies, and civil servants to more strongly emphasise ethnic harmony, national unity, and efficient governance.

[…]

1Malaysia stresses national unity and ethnic tolerance. The 2010 values of 1Malaysia as articulated by Najib Razak are perseverance, a culture of excellence, acceptance, loyalty, education, humility, integrity, and meritocracy.

So who’s behind this push for imposing a Malaysian template on Sweden? LN notes:

The Steering Group for “One Sweden” seems to include the following:

1.

Kista College,

2.

Swedish Muslims for Peace and Justice,

3.

Sensus Learning Centres,

4.

Seglora think-tank,

5.

Youth Against Racism,

6.

Paideia — The European Institute for Jewish Studies in Sweden, and

7.

Sektor3 think-tank

These are almost the same as the groups that signed on to the Svenska Dagbladet op-ed I translated a few days ago — except for the Pentecostals. Are Pentecostals now to be excluded?

The online forum Flashback.org discusses “One Sweden” in less than glowing terms:

Regarding Malaysia the following is applied.

Muslims have priority to jobs in government and university programs.

In its 5 states it is forbidden to convert from Islam to other religions. The punishment is flogging or imprisonment.

The state makes it virtually impossible for Muslims to change religion.

Women and men flogged for extramarital sex.

Unmarried couples in hotels are arrested by the Sharia police.

Cultural expressions, from Salman Rushdie to SpongeBob SquarePants are prohibited.

A law, Internal Securities Act, makes it possible to detain people without trial indefinitely.

Sodomy, including both heterosexual and homosexual oral sex, is illegal.

Political Principle Rukunegara makes atheism unpatriotic

Has this campaign — One Sweden — chosen a suitable country as a model?

Will special legislation and prohibition of books that might offend Muslims be required?

Will the campaign be a success?

The nay-sayers at Flashback.org are to be disregarded. The right-minded deconstructionists in Stockholm (and Brussels) will have their way. The new, One Sweden will be built, with the Swedish MSM cheering the project on.

In anticipation of the government’s action against extremism, a new network began today: One Sweden. After the suicide bomber’s and serial shooter’s crimes, Muslims, Christians, Jews and secular people will focus on what unites us.

Lena Lönnqvist, president of Sjövik College, Abdulkader Habib, president of the Kista College and Dr. Lindqvist Hotz from the Seglora foundation participated in the start-up meeting of Network One of Sweden…

When the suicide bomber Taimour Abdulwahab recorded an audio file for the Security Police (SÄPO) and the news agency TT, he turned, as he said, to the Swedish people. As the artist Lars Vilks’ drawings and Sweden’s activities in Afghanistan had been met with silence, “… so will your children, daughters, brothers and sisters die just as our brothers and sisters and children die.”

“Then I thought: what children are not my children? The serial shooter in Malmö claims the right to polarize society,” says the President of Kista College, Abdulkader Habib.

He and several other representatives of Christian, Jewish, Muslim and secular movements such as the free-market think tank Timbro gathered on Saturday to kick off a meeting of Network One, Sweden. The site was Medborgarexpon in Kista. One Sweden should not be an organization, no integration projects, emphasizes Abdulkader Habib. The role model is One Malaysia initiative, which aims at not only the Muslim portion of the Malaysian population, but also includes Chinese and Indian groups. The focus is on joint training, development and democracy.

“When I heard that the democracy minister intended to take stock of other countries to create an action plan against extremism, I thought: let’s not wait for it and then criticize. No, we should welcome it and make our own action plan,” he said.

Monday, July 23, 2012

The Spanish region Murcia has followed Valencia into insolvency and asked the central government for a bailout, increasing the chances that Spain will call on the ECB for a rescue. The prospect of a financial collapse in Spain caused the European markets to plummet, and also depressed stock prices in Tokyo and New York.

In other news, James Holmes, the Colorado theater shooter, appeared in court for the first time in a preliminary hearing. The suspect appeared dazed and inattentive, and his attorney had to answer the questions directed at his client by the judge. Mr. Holmes is being held without bail.

Thanks to C. Cantoni, CSP, Fjordman, Gaia, JP, Seneca III, Steen, and all the other tipsters who sent these in.

Notice to tipsters: Please don’t submit extensive excerpts from articles that have been posted behind a subscription firewall, or are otherwise under copyright protection.

Commenters are advised to leave their comments at this post (rather than with the news articles) so that they are more easily accessible.

Caveat: Articles in the news feed are posted “as is”. Gates of Vienna cannot vouch for the authenticity or accuracy of the contents of any individual item posted here. We check each entry to make sure it is relatively interesting, not patently offensive, and at least superficially plausible. The link to the original is included with each item’s title. Further research and verification are left to the reader.

The Sun, a British tabloid, has done the kind of investigative reporting that the larger papers can’t seem to manage: it busted a ring of corrupt Pakistani officials who were selling passports and visas that would allow buyers to enter Britain along with Pakistan’s Olympic team, and perhaps even gain access to the Olympic stadium.

As soon as its operative obtained his false passport, the paper turned its information over to MI6.

VaeVictis sent this narrative about an important battle in Spain’s 13th century Reconquista history, the history Islam is so anxious to re-write.

Unfortunately VV emailed the story to Gates of Vienna while the Baron was at the Brussels Conference; his essay was subsequently buried in the tons of correspondence that came in during that period. It was only his courteous reminder yesterday that made me realize I’d passed right by the timely commemorative post I’d planned. Thus, as wtih many of my good intentions this story is being published later than I’d have liked. But what the heck — I’m already infamous by now for my tardy thank you notes, belated birthday cards and wilted bouquets — why change my s.o.p. this late in the game? Besides, in the shadow cast by eight centuries, what’s an extra week?

It’s still a good story even though the present-day revelers have long since returned home to plan for next year. At least I hope there’s a next year for Las Navas de Tolosa. Who knows how long they’ll be permitted to continue commemorating this hinge of history?

July 16th 2012 marked the 800th anniversary of one of the greatest of the Spanish reconquista confrontations: the Battle of Las Navas de Tolosa. This crucial encounter pitted the combined might of the Almohad Empire against the disparate Christian kingdoms of Spain. The result was a spectacular triumph on the Spanish side.

In honor of this momentous victory the city of La Carolina, where the famous battle took place, has always hosted commemorative festivities to mark the occasion. However, with the increasing incursions of political correctness into Spanish culture this event has now been deemed unseemly and excessively nationalistic by certain elements of the Spanish establishment. Therefore no government representatives from the central, provincial or autonomous regions were present. Nor do members of the Spanish royal family any longer attend. Only the government of Navarre continues to support the occasion and to send representatives to commemorate one of the most important battles in Spanish history.

The surest way to obliterate a culture’s identity, or to dishonor a nation’s sovereignty is to ignore the momentous events of its past. In this case, it is a narrative worth preserving:

On the night before July 16 1212, a patchwork coalition of Spanish kingdoms and military orders secretly made their way over a little- known mountain pass to emerge by morning on the plains of Tolosa. Here a massive Almohad army numbering some 200,000 had occupied a strong defensive position. This immense force had been levied from across the entire breadth of the Almohad Empire by the Caliph al Nasir. Most were from the Almohad’s North African possessions including the modern countries of Morroco, Algeria, Tunisia, Mauretania and going as far south as Senegal. There were also contingents of Andalusians, Iberian Muslims born and bred in Europe, and fanatical volunteers from various corners of the Muslim world.

Most Gates of Vienna readers are already familiar with the work of Prof. Dr. Hans Jansen, a retired Professor of Modern Islamic Thought at the University of Utrecht.

Dr. Jansen was the keynote speaker at the Brussels Conference in the European Parliament two weeks ago. A video of his speech (with improved audio) is embedded at the bottom of this post, along with videos of his testimony at the trial of Geert Wilders in the fall of 2010. The text of Dr. Jansen’s speech in Brussels is here, and the transcript of his trial testimony is here.

The paper below was originally presented by Dr. Jansen to U.S. government officials at a conference in Arlington, Virginia in 2006. We are deeply grateful to the author for sending it to us.

The Muslim Brotherhood Movement: A Glance at its History and Ideology

By Prof. Dr. Johannes J.G. Jansen

The West has enemies, and these enemies have declared war on us. Our enemies have no difficulty at all in identifying us, but we, on the contrary, have great difficulty in identifying them. It is with good reason that we hesitate to identify them, because if one of the great world religions is our sworn enemy, we are in for a difficult period. However, life has been difficult before, and as you all know the free world managed to survive both Nazism and Communism.

However, Europe on its own could never have survived the Nazis, or the Communists. American involvement in these struggles has been essential for the survival of Europe, and the same is true for the present battle. If the US does not participate in the present battle with all resources that are needed, especially its intellectual resources, the battle we are in will eventually be lost. Then Europe will fall. The fall of Europe may have long term consequences for the US. It is better not to speculate about these consequences.

The US war effort, any war effort, has to be directed against an enemy who can be named and identified. It is obvious that this is a political necessity because as you all know wars have to be supported by public opinion, but there is more to it. Without an identified and named enemy all war efforts are wasted. Without a named and identified enemy the war effort is not a war effort, but it is an exercise, and probably even an exercise in futility. The hesitation by the US authorities and media to name and define our present enemy undermines the security of the US, and hence the security of the rest of the world. In Europe, the situation in this respect is of course much, much worse.

The program of today’s conference suggests that we are not at war with Islam, or the majority of the Muslims, but with the Muslim Brotherhood. This organization was founded in the late twenties in Egypt, by a primary-school teacher who was at that point in time 23 years old. His name was Hasan al-Banna. The first pamphlet al-Banna wrote has not been included in any collection of his works. It is an undated pamphlet, but internal evidence suggests it was written in May 1929, and published not much later, probably in June 1929. The pamphlet is an attack on the Egyptian educational system, which is interesting, but even more interesting is that the pamphlet contains long paragraphs full of praise for the Italian Fascist leader Benito Mussolini. If there ever was any doubt that European fascism played the role of midwife at the birth of modern Muslim radicalism, this pamphlet will take all your doubts away.

The movement which Al-Banna founded was definitely not stillborn. Let us take a look at the numbers. A successful new religious movement, like the Mormons, if for clarity’s sake I may use that popular appellation, normally expands by a forty percent in ten years. Al-Banna’s movement, on the contrary, grew by one hundred percent each year. This incredible but reliably documented percentage means that the Muslim Brotherhood was not your average new religious movement that had to struggle to win over the hearts and minds of the people who crossed its path. The Muslim Brotherhood did not have to convince people of new truths; it was a movement that preached to the converted. Muslims who came into contact with the Brotherhood soon realized that they agreed with the slogans of the Brotherhood, of which the most important are al-qur’aan dusturnaa wa-l-jihaad sabiiluna, the Koran is our law and jihaad is our way. I suggest we take these slogans seriously.

First, something about ‘the Koran is our law’, al-qur’aan dusturnaa. The Koran is a difficult book that contains dozens of passages that even the initiated and the heavily bearded do not understand. But a few things are remarkably clear. For instance in 9:30 the Koran talks about people who believe that Jesus of Nazareth is the son of God. Now to believe that Jesus is the son of God is a perfectly respectable belief that has been held by millions of respectable people for the past two millennia. If, however, the Koran were to be the law of the land, there would be a problem for these people, because the Koran explicitly curses and damns these people (9:30), and the Koran even expresses the wish that people who believe that Christ is the son of God shall be killed in battle, qaatalahumullaah. May I remind you: The Brotherhood wants this document, the Koran, to be the law, and this document, the Koran, contains many, many more passages that are similar, or worse, or much worse.

Second, something about Jihad, the ‘way’ of the Brotherhood, according to their own slogan. Friends of Islam often argue that Jihad is a rich concept that may have a whole lot of positive connotations, and that it certainly is not something as crude as a holy war. It is true that Jihad is not war, because war has a beginning and an end. Jihad, on the contrary, does not have an end. It does have a beginning, in the days of Muhammad, in the seventh century AD. According to sayings of Muhammad and countless Muslim leaders, Jihad will go on until the Last Day, the Day of Judgment. Jihad, according to Muslim doctrine, never comes to an end.

In practice, though not in theory, Jihad means keeping up the military pressure on the non-Muslim world, in order to expand the domain of Islam by whatever means possible. In happier days, the duty to wage Jihad was carried out exclusively by Muslim states and Muslim governments. This type of Jihad, carried out by states, came to an end on September 11, 1683, when the Turkish siege of Vienna was lifted by the Polish army. Sayyid Qutb refers to this millennium of Muslim military supremacy as ‘the first round’ (al-gawla al-uulaa, Zilaal 3, 1.560, Sura 8). Jihad against the West was, however, resumed on September 11, 2001, with a spectacular but senseless attack on America. However — and this is an important distinction — in this the ‘second round’ Jihad has become a private affair for which no sane government in the world wanted to be held responsible — even if they secretly were.

All over the Muslim world, the organization of the Muslim Brotherhood, which preaches that Jihad is its way, and the Koran its law, doubled its membership annually for years and years. What does this tell us about the nature of such an organization and the nature of the audiences amongst which the Brotherhood could be so spectacularly successful? It tells us that Muslim audiences, with few, very few, individual exceptions, agree with the message of the Brotherhood.

More news from the “Brussels backlog”: a story that came out a couple of weeks ago in Alerta Digital.

Many thanks to Hermes for the translation:

A delegate from the Italian Northern League in Milan proposes to keep subway coaches only for Italians due to the bad behavior of immigrants

The Northern League delegate Matteo Salvini proposed today to reserve some subway coaches in Milan only for Italians and women due to what he called the “bad behavior of immigrants”.

Salvini had no doubts about linking the increasing lack of safety in the streets with the phenomenon of immigration, to the point of declaring that “in ten years, natives from Milan will be a minority” and they will end up traveling separately in the subway just like crippled and disabled veterans in past times.

“If immigration is not stopped, then we will reach this point,” he asserted. Meanwhile, “We ask for one or two coaches to be reserved for women, taking into consideration those hundreds of complaints of aggression, sexual molestation, insults and disturbing comments they have to endure every day,” he specified.

Here’s another news brief from the backlog that accumulated while I was in Brussels. It’s from our Swedish correspondent PMP, and concerns a recent decision by the Swedish government to extend “free” health care to all illegal immigrants.

As with similar decisions by the American government concerning “undocumented” migrants from Latin America, the ruling renders the distinction between legal and illegal immigration all but meaningless.

This summary was drawn from Swedish media outlets, and thus has no links to any Internet sources:

Free health care in Sweden to illegal immigrants

In a recent press conference, the Swedish government announced that they had reached an internal agreement regarding health care and the situation of illegal immigrants. Quoting the report from the government, the following was reached:

Individuals who hide to avoid being expelled, and those who hide without having applied for citizenship, shall acquire the right to health care. Included is the following:

Individuals under 18 years who are illegally living in Sweden shall be given:

Sunday, July 22, 2012

According to Bulgarian media outlets, the suicide bomber who killed six people at the Burgas airport had an accomplice, for whom police are now searching. The role of the accomplice may have been to trigger the explosive device remotely.

In other news, terrorists have blown up the Egypt-Israel gas pipeline in Gaza for the fourteenth time since the Arab Spring began in 2011.

Thanks to C. Cantoni, Fjordman, Insubria, JD, Nick, RR, and all the other tipsters who sent these in.

Notice to tipsters: Please don’t submit extensive excerpts from articles that have been posted behind a subscription firewall, or are otherwise under copyright protection.

Commenters are advised to leave their comments at this post (rather than with the news articles) so that they are more easily accessible.

Caveat: Articles in the news feed are posted “as is”. Gates of Vienna cannot vouch for the authenticity or accuracy of the contents of any individual item posted here. We check each entry to make sure it is relatively interesting, not patently offensive, and at least superficially plausible. The link to the original is included with each item’s title. Further research and verification are left to the reader.